We have recently updated our Privacy Policy. The site uses cookies to offer you a better experience. By continuing to browse the site you accept our Cookie Policy, you can change your settings at any time.

Archaeology, Language, and the African Past is an overview of theories and methods, a fusion of African linguistics and archaeology. Roger Blench provides a comprehensive look at the history of all African language families, incorporating the latest linguistic classifications, current evidence from archaeology, genetic research, and recorded history. This original and definitive volume examines the economic culture of the continent-from major crops and plant life to animals and livestock-from a multi-dimensional perspective. It provides students of linguistics, archaeology, and anthropology with a critical discussion on the history of African languages and the cultures they articulate.

This book is an enthusiastic plea in favour of more intensive and dynamic trans-disciplinary collaboration for the reconstruction of the African past. With a comprehensive survey of methodological issues, the author offers a good insight in what we can credibly recover from the historical study of languages. He develops a series of inspiring assumptions on the origin and expansion of Africa's language families by linking the most recent linguistic data-often collected by himself-with evidence from archaeology, genetics, ethnography, and oral traditions. He also delves into the economic history of the continent through the comparative study of plant and animal vocabularies, a field of research which unfortunately too few other scholars in African linguistics have explored. -- Koen Bostoen, Royal Museum for Central Africa Tervuren, BelgiumRoger Blench's new book is an impressive demonstration of the ways in which evidence from different disciplines-including archaeology, historical linguistics, comparative ethnography, ethnobiology, and genetics-can be combined to generate compelling reconstructions of African prehistory. The result is both entertaining and scholarly, a magisterial synthesis of current methods and knowledge that is enriched by a wealth of data and insights from the author's own researches in the field. This is a book that no student of the African past can afford to be without. -- Martin Walsh, University of CambridgeRoger Blench, discoverer of numerous relict and isolated African languages, takes a refreshing, global, and interdisciplinary approach to his study of African historical linguistics and archaeology, and of the cultural dynamics that lie behind the present peopling of the continent. His erudite, critical, and yet accessible exposition and bold-at times controversial-synthesis document the present state of the 'mutual interplay' between the two disciplines in a book that linguists will argue about and archaeologists pore over for many years to come. -- Nic David, University of CalgaryFor over a century linguists, archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, and more recently, geneticists have each been writing their own versions of African history. Similarly, specialists in the four African language phyla have been telling the history and classification of their own phylum. Now for the first time comes a book which synthesizes all these threads. The author is at once scholarly and able to communicate in a way that makes the book accessible to students and academics. -- Derek Nurse, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Click & Collect

Simply reserve online and pay at the counter when you collect.
Available in shop from just two hours, subject to availability.

Thank you for your reservation

Your order is now being processed and we have sent a confirmation email to you at

This item can be requested from the shops shown below. If this item isn't available to be reserved nearby, add the item to your basket instead and select 'Deliver to my local shop' at the checkout, to be able to collect it from there at a later date.

First name*

Last name*

Email address*

Preferred contact method

EmailText message

Mobile number*

Please provide me with your latest book news, views and details of Waterstones’ special offers.

When will my order be ready to collect?

Following the initial email, you will be contacted by the shop to confirm that your item is available for collection.

Call us on or send us an email at

Unfortunately there has been a problem with your order

Please try again or alternatively you can contact your chosen shop on or send us an email at